Fedora 26 Release Party @fossaegean

Yesterday he had our Fedora 26 Pre-Release event at the University of the Aegean, and for the first time we had so many people! The event was organized by me and Giannis Konstantinidis, and it was hosted at fossaegean, a physical space in our university dedicated to Free and Open Source Software. The release party this time took place slightly ahead of the release schedule. As universities do not operate during July-August, we wanted to organize it before summer vacations.

As new members came, we decided to start with a quick ice-breaking session so we can all get familiar with each other. Later we started explaining the Fedora Project, and its 4 Foundations. Giannis also explained the different flavors of Fedora, its spins, and the supported secondary architectures. Then I continued explaining what has changed in Fedora over the past few years, further explaining why we now “produce” 3 different products, and why each one is equally important and useful. Later on, we explained and showcased the new features of the Fedora 26, for Workstation, Server, and Atomic. Finally, Giannis explained how easy it is for someone to start contributing and make an impact to the Project. Particularly, new members were interested in Fedora Magazine. We were very happy to give away plenty of Fedora stickers and pins in the meantime!

After a 30 minute break for coffee/tea and cookies, we demonstrated the installation of the new version of Fedora (F26 Beta), and explained how easy it is to install it side-by-side with Windows. In the meantime we had a fruitful discussion about Gnome and KDE. After the installation, I continued with my 1.5-hour workshop about making your first steps as a Fedora Packager. Specifically I showcased Copr, the community build service for Fedora, where you upload a SRC RPM package and you get a RPM repository. We also had a live demo and participants were able to experiment with packages and eventually submit a package to Copr to be built.

Like our previous release parties, those who stayed till the end were awarded with pizza and cold soft drinks!